Scribe, the Forward’s curated contributor network, is a place for showcasing personal experiences and perspective from across our Jewish communities. Here you will find a wide array of reflections on Jewish issues, life-cycle events, spirituality, culture and more.
Community
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You say matzah — and matzo and matzuh and matzee and more
Readers respond to our editor-in-chief’s column about a Passover copy-editing conundrum
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‘What are you all eating? Hold it up to the camera, let’s see.’ Ramadan adapts to Zoom
This year, Ramadan is like none we have experienced. While fasting involves abstinence from food, drink, and sexual relations from daybreak to sundown, what makes it the most wonderful time of the year is the communal gatherings. The spirit of community comes alive at iftar, when we break our fast together as the sun sets….
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On Omer beards past and present: ‘My fallowing of face reflected many things’
It began as an act of laziness — I admit it. Over the years, vacation or illness had provided ample excuse to liberate my routine and my face from the rigors and razor burn of daily manscaping. There was the occasional foray in pursuit of novelty, a stylistic dynamism that seemed amply available to women,…
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‘This Shabbat, like the several before it, Jews in New York City will not gather to sing Lecha Dodi together’
Every Friday night at dusk, Jews welcome the Shabbat to the words of Lecha Dodi. Lecha Dodi is one of the most beloved pieces in Jewish liturgy, and a barometer of sorts for our communal mood: When Hanukkah approaches, it’s paired with chipper holiday melodies; on the Shabbat before Tisha B’av, it’s accompanied by the…
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Covid has a gender disparity — and so does all medical care
Like many diseases, COVID-19 impacts men and women differently. It causes significantly fewer fatalities in women than men, a distinction that is visible across countries and cultures. Even when women have higher rates of diagnosis, men still have higher rates of death. Scientists are working to identify why this is, investigating men’s rates of smoking…
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Read ‘My Mask,’ a picture book to help kids understand coronavirus
Like many grandmothers, I’ve been trying to find a way to connect with my grandkids in this pandemic. I penned a poem for my granddaughter Livia who lives in Hollywood, Florida — the other side of the globe from me in Israel; we now visit on Facetime. My daughter, Miriam, a self-taught painter, took it…
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After 49 days, what can we count on?
Jews love counting. One God. Four Questions. Six million victims. Shabbat on the seventh day. Eight nights of Chanukah. Squeezing in nine holes of golf. Six hundred and thirteen mitzvot. Checks in multiples of eighteen, but only after you’ve turned thirteen… or hit eighty-three. No wonder we count so many accountants among the 14.6 million…
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‘How will our routines change when all of this is over?’
Routine is a construction, and so many of us are trying to construct some kind of routine amid days that blend together. In my house the routine used to be clear, crystallized by years of careful shaping and re-shaping. We learned to leave for the bus stop two minutes earlier. We pushed bedtime up or back…
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‘All the lights were off, except for one…the ner tamid’
For many religious people across the world, the loss of not being able to go into “the office” is coupled with the loss of another important source of connection, belonging and purpose – one’s house of prayer. For me, they happen to be the same place. I’m one of the rabbis at Sixth & I…
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I’m a professional comic. Here’s why you need to laugh about this pandemic.
The pandemic has brought serious challenges: people losing their health, their jobs, not to mention the COVID-19 pound weight gain. In short, there is nothing funny about the coronavirus. Or is there? COVID-19 takes away our sense of taste and smell. But there’s something it can’t – and shouldn’t– take away– our sense of humor….
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‘Breathe, my brothers,’ a prayer for my beloved kin with coronavirus
My day begins each morning with a walk to the ocean. I start early, in the still shy light of day. There are usually a number of people out when I walk, but in these days of sheltering in place of the coronavirus, the sidewalks and streets are eerily empty. A lone car. When I…
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Graduations, camp and more is canceled. ‘What can we say that does not risk pablum or platitudes?’
“What happens to a dream deferred?” With this question, Langston Hughes began his poem “Harlem,” inquiring what happens to a person who discovers their long-sought dream to be unobtainable. Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Does it linger and fester? Or does it, as Hughes suggests in his allusion to the…
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